


a letter with no address (every word is your name)

by smallredboy



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Catholicism, Eating Disorders, Fake Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Letters, M/M, Post-Finale, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: After House's death, Chase can't quite cope.





	a letter with no address (every word is your name)

**Author's Note:**

> for trope bingo w/ the square 'presumed dead' and 15woes with one of the your choice prompts, which i used for 'grief'.
> 
> can be seen as a prequel for _[i can see my future in his leather jacket](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262523)_ and/or a sequel for _[they say your head can be a prison (then these are just conjugal visits)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671277)_, but they're only quite vaguely linked.
> 
> enjoy!

Chase walks into the office of the Dean of Medicine, aware what lays in wait for him. It's pretty much the same as when Cuddy was there, a few changes in the decor, but nothing big. 

Foreman is waiting for him, seated on top of his desk. He tilts his head, smiles at him like there's nothing going on. Like House didn't burn to a crisp in that fire, like House has just gone on vacation and they need a replacement for the department in the meanwhile. 

"You're going to be the new Head of Diagnostics," Foreman tells him. "I'll help you find a team and all that, if you'd like."

"I can do it on my own," he mutters. "When are you getting the new plaque?" He pauses for a few seconds. "You know, with my name on it. And all of that."

"Ah." Foreman's eyes light up. "I already had it. I knew you wouldn't say no." It's not like he had much of a choice. He has no plans to leave Jersey, and after working at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital for so long, he doubts he will ever be comfortable in another hospital. The only choice he has is to be in House's shoes, as badly as they may fit; even if his feet blister, he has to keep going. 

Foreman hands him the heavy plaque to put on the desk— on  _ House's _ desk (the oversized tennis ball is still there, always silently judging every visitor, reminding Chase of what he has lost). Robert Chase, MD. Head of Diagnostics. 

Bile rises up his throat and he coughs, trying to mask the way his eyes go misty with tears, his vision blurry with nausea. He shouldn't be replacing House so carelessly, he shouldn't be there, looking through a heavy file of people who once wanted to work under House before they were rejected or not even considered. The department isn't important by itself— without House none of it makes sense. 

And  _ nobody _ seems to grieve. The funeral was filled with sparse words, sparser feelings. Stacy looked regretful, but everyone else almost seemed as if they thanked God for getting rid of House. How dare they? How dare they know him for so long, appreciate him as a doctor, but not realize there was a person there? They all were quiet during the procession, no tears to be shed. Meanwhile, Chase was struggling to breathe, tears overflowing, his heart wilting up inside his chest. 

He is House's replacement. Someone to keep the game going. He doesn't think he can do it, but he has to. He grabs the plaque with both hands, presses it close to his chest like it's his rosary. 

He manages to say, "I'll get going."

Foreman nods. "Good luck with the department."

Good luck trying to live up to him, he says in between lines, in the small print. As he stares at the plaque, stealing glances to it as he makes his way downstairs, he knows no one could ever live up to Gregory House. Much less his disciple. 

*******

“We should celebrate his accomplishments,” Cameron starts, even while she keeps a careful distance in between them at the break room. The divorce is from two years ago, but the wounds and the bitterness are still there, although they hurt less. Perhaps because he has bigger wounds to focus on. “Instead of consuming ourselves in grief.”

It’s her way of saying cheer up, stop being sad over your boss dying, stop grieving him, stop wanting him to be alive and breathing, stop wanting it all to be a sick joke. Which, after weeks of hearing that same thing over and over in between the lines, it drives him up the wall.

“No,” he hisses out. Cameron raises a brow, surprised. “We shouldn’t— I should have the right to mourn him, Allison. He was —” The past tense nearly makes him break down into pathetic, quiet sobs. He keeps his cool, as much as he can. “He was a good person.”

And Cameron looks at him, almost questioning him. Her look is judgemental. Of he wasn’t. He wasn’t a good person. He was a terrible man who did terrible things, who also happened to be terribly smart and terribly messed up. He accepts that. 

Maybe he wasn’t a good person, maybe he wasn’t a good person by most people’s definition of that. But he was intelligent, he was witty, and beneath the surface, he knows, deep down, that he cared. That he cared, and he fought, and he fucked up so much against himself. Perhaps he is idolizing him, he knows that makes sense (especially only two weeks, three days, three hours since he was notified of his passing), but he can’t begin to accept it. 

He stands up, blood boiling. “He was a good person,” he insists without any prompting. He was a good person.

*******

His methods to regain control are, as always, not the best.

He goes down the same path he did when his father died, but this time it’s worse— he skips meals, eats little, watches his weight. He needs to have control, he needs to be in a place where he knows what’s going to happen. The line from not eating to losing weight is direct and there’s no qualms about it. The results are predictable. So he sticks to what’s predictable, because what he can’t know beforehand has only ever brought him pain.

Sometimes, he can’t manage to sleep. He fantasizes about it, over and over again. It’s always the same prim, picture-perfect, movie-worthy scene. That scene he wishes it all was like. Smoke carrying right into his lungs, coughing fits overwhelming his body as he makes his way into the burning house. House’s unconscious body on his shoulders, as heavy as he is, as much as every step feels like swallowing glass. He makes it out, passes out with House lying on the grass, the burns not anywhere close to lethal. (It’s always up in the air if his are anywhere close to lethal, but he wouldn’t mind either way. If he had to sacrifice himself, his skin, for House to be alive and breathing, he’d do it a hundred times over.)

Fantasizing about what could’ve been always makes him ache with need. With need for it all to be different, with the need to wake up from this nightmare. Because surely, a world without House is not a world he wants to live in. He’d rather live in his world, he’d rather escape this reality, than live in his own without House in it.

He always looks at the prescribed medication he got from that therapist he talked to during the divorce. Those antidepressants he seldom takes. He always considers it briefly, a passing thought of  _ wouldn’t it be nice for all of it to just go away forever— _ before slamming the counter shut. 

He has to keep going. He’s not sure for whom, for what, or even why, but he has to.

*******

The letter he pens isn’t ever going to be sent. There’s no way to send it to a graveyard, anyhow, as far as he’s aware. So he keeps it tucked under his pillow, like a reminder of what he’s lost to chance, to probability, to grief. He tries hard to make it sound like that, like he’s not just an emotional little kid rattling on about something stupid and worthless, like writing a letter to a dead man, for example.

_ Life is worse without your influence. Foreman’s bitchy, Cameron doesn’t talk to me much, and trying to find people to work under me is nauseating. I don’t know how you ever did it. It’s all so terrible— I sometimes think I do understand you, who you are, who you were. Every day I lose a bit more weight and it reminds me that maybe I can take my life back. Maybe it will all work out. _

_ It’s like you took all my happiness with you. Did it burn with your body? Did the house life left you in smolder out the joy of life, too? I know you wouldn’t like it, but I pray for your soul. I pray for everything to turn out alright, for you to be up in Heaven. I know you did not believe in Him, but oh, I just don’t want you to suffer any more.  _

_ You are a good person and you’ve suffered enough. I think you deserve a soft epilogue. A nicer plane of existence to land in. _

_ I miss you. _

_ Love, Chase. _


End file.
